Enormous research and development efforts have been made, during the past 100 years, to develop sensors that detect the presence of target molecules, target particles, or other target objects in solutions, air or other gasses, adsorbed to surfaces, or otherwise present in an environment or sample. With the advent of modern microelectronic, sub-microelectronic, microelectromechanical, and sub-microelectromechanical fabrication technologies, a wide variety of different types of sensors have been developed for commercial use. Sensors may be macroscale devices that include arrays of microscale sensor elements, such as oligonucleotide-probe-based microarrays, or may be microscale, sub-microscale or nanoscale electromechanical, electro-optical, or optical-mechanical subcomponents of microelectromechanical devices, and microfluidic devices. A wide variety of different types of sensors are used in analytical instruments, diagnostics, and scientific instrumentation. As with many other types of technology, sensors are often characterized by various parameters of importance to researchers, designers, and manufacturers of sensor-based devices and equipment, including cost, sensitivity, specificity, viability, reusability, durability, and flexibility in application. Researchers, designers, and manufacturers of sensors and sensor-based devices and equipment continue to seek new sensor technologies that provide low-cost, reliable, durable, reusable, sensitive, and highly specific sensors that can be as broadly applied as possible to a variety of problem domains.